


if you show me how (when you're around)

by blanchtt



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 04:44:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21422392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: There is something a little different about Wynonna and Deputy Marshall Dolls and Henry and Willa, Nicole has long ago decided, just like there is about Purgatory. Not always bad, but definitely different.And in the end it doesn’t surprise her that there’s something different about Waverly, too.
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Comments: 5
Kudos: 61





	if you show me how (when you're around)

**Author's Note:**

> A little twist on canon based on [this](https://youareavision.tumblr.com/post/163959829727/wayhaught-angelwaverly-there-has-been-so-much).
> 
> Set vaguely in season one because I just started this show and that's as far as I've gotten lmao.

The tap handle breaks, a shirt is half-lifted, and Waverly is now stuck, leaving Nicole to almost wonder if it’s all an elaborate ploy. 

A ploy to do what, she’s not sure. Expose her? Get her fired? Kill her? There’s been a lot of weird shit going down in Purgatory since she moved here, and she wouldn’t be surprised if this were part of it. Disappearances. Women eaten by… something. Her new boss, Sheriff Nedley, unfazed and unwilling to dig very deep. Biker gangs rougher than any she’s ever seen, even having grown up around these parts.

But the little voice that’s speaking from behind the bar counter, midriff barred and muffled by a shirt, doesn’t make her think it’s a potential murder situation.

“Please?”

As much as Nicole had seen the other young woman and, like in the cartoons she used to watch on Saturday mornings, had felt as if she’d been struck with a serious case of hearts for eyes and a pounding heart, a part of her chides herself that it could be another drunk girl at a bar, playing with her to titillate her boyfriend. _ Been there, done that, never wanna go back. _How do you get a shirt stuck on your head like that anyway, unless you’re drunk or five years old? 

But a sexy ploy, too, seems unlikely as they’re the only ones in the bar and Waverly’s still struggling. And she just can’t say no to a woman in peril, by the badge she wears or by her own heart, and so Nicole steps around the counter, grabs the shirt careful by the hem, mindful not to let anything except her fingertips touch Waverly or her eyes to linger on her torso, and lifts the shirt up slowly, careful not to catch it on anything like Waverly's pretty nose or ears adorned with long, easily-caught-on-shirts type of earrings.

Nicole's left with a damp shirt in her hands and the face of a very grateful Waverly looking up at her. 

“Uh, um,” Waverly stammers after a moment, collecting herself as she reaches up and swipes her long hair to the side, tucked behind an ear before it immediately falls back in her line of vision. But it’s with a smile on her face, taking the shirt Nicole offers and holding it to her chest. “Thanks. I… I owe you one.”

In all seriousness, Nicole would really like that coffee she’d asked about. The instant stuff at work is crap. She’ll get another one on the way to work, but it’s a good conversation starter.

“Alright, well,” Nicole starts, takes a gamble as she hooks her thumb through a belt-loop of her khakis. “How about you buy me that cup of coffee? How about tonight?”

Waverly’s smile loses some of its brilliance, the other woman shifting—not uncomfortable, but like she’s at a loss as of what to do with herself.

“I'm in a relationship. With a boy. Man. A boy-man,” Wavelry stutters, and Nicole smiles. 

The coffee is an earnest offer, not just an excuse to try to get into Waverly’s jeans. She should be getting on to work anyway, and so Nicole grabs her Stetson, slips off the barstool and places the hat on her head as she nods goodbye at Waverly.

“Alright. Well, some other time. I mean it.”

Waverly’s smiling and nodding, shirt still clutched to her chest as she raises a hand in goodbye, waves just a little. 

“Officer Haught.”

-

Turns out regardless of whether or not either of them _ want _to have coffee, they were going to meet again anyway—though from the way Waverly looks at her, Nicole thinks without a lick of pride and just a flutter of hope, Waverly might be starting to want more than just coffee.

Wynonna is constantly around the office, up to something with Deputy Marshall Dolls, and that means by default Waverly is always there too, the two sisters and Dolls holed up in their makeshift office.

The first time Nicole meets him, _really_ meets him, does not go smoothly.

“‘If you ever enter my offices again without knocking, I'm gonna have you arrested for treason,’” Nicole mocks under her breath, typing away at her computer. _ Dick. _

She tries to focus on the work in front of her—it’s another case of a woman mangled by something. Victim Number Three, multiple lacerations, found in a deserted part of town.

“Hey.”

Nicole hits the enter button a little too hard, happy for the intrusion, and looks up, sees Waverly leaning against the counter, arms crossed on it and smiling. 

Her hair’s half done up in a top-knot, rest of it framing her face, and Nicole feels that flutter again, can’t help but smile. Waverly's got some sort of loose-knitted shirt on, baring most of her shoulders, and it strikes Nicole for the second time that Waverly always wears loose shirts, baring midriff or cleavage, which, it should be said, Nicole _only_ notes because it’s about two degrees outside. 

But as odd as a choice as that may seem in autumn in Alberta, she chalks it up to Waverly’s personal style—it’s not far off from her sisters', Wynonna usually in nothing more than jeans, a t-shirt, and a thin leather jacket. How they manage in this weather, Nicole will never understand.

“How are you not cold?” Nicole asks anyway, sitting back in her chair and welcoming the distraction. 

“Luck?” Waverly answers with a smile, the tilt of her head, and a cheerful laugh. 

Nicole's been at this job long enough, has been a good enough judge of character all her life, to know a lie when she sees one. And Waverly can’t lie for shit. Maybe in other people a lie might mean something shifty, something she should be wary of, especially considering another young woman’s just gone missing. It’s the very file she’s working on right now, for crying out loud.

“_So_,” Waverly says, drawing the word out and playing with the sleeve of her sweater, though never losing her nervous smile, and _oh_, Nicole’s gone for good. 

Nicole pushes the thought of murders and disappearances and lies aside because she’s tired of doors shutting in her face and working on this file downstairs all alone, and it’s cold and this is _ Waverly Earp, _who weighs about twenty pounds soaking wet. 

A call comes with a crackle of static over the radio for a 10-60, and so Nicole stands, shrugs off her jacket, grabs her things, and slips around the counter, holds her jacket out to drape it over Waverly’s shoulders, a brow raised in offer. After a moment of surprise, Nicole watches pleased as Waverly steps closer and leans into it, letting the heavy fabric drape on her shoulders as Nicole lets go of it.

“Thank you, Office Haught,” Waverly says, reaching up to brush a strand of hair behind her ear with a giggly smile, and Nicole wonders in amusement if Waverly actually put her arms through the sleeves if she would even be able to use her fingertips without rolling up the sleeves. She’s not particularly tall, but damn if Waverly isn’t a little slip of a thing. 

And, oh, Waverly’s charm works on her like the best of them, the way her eyes crinkle up at the corners when Waverly smiles and how she reaches to her side and slaps the desk with a hand with finality, and says, “Let’s go find that maniac. Funny story—I think I may know him.”

_ Boyfriend_, Nicole has to remind herself herself, the keys to the Crown Victoria cold in her hand as they head out, Waverly at her side.

-

Waverly closes the door after them and slips past her, yanks on the pulls of the blinds until the room is eventually dimmed a significant amount, the only light slipping in through gaps in the dusty old wood blinds.

_ You never look a gift horse in the mouth, _ her daddy taught her. But there are different rules for different types of people, Nicole has learned growing up, has learned from having her heart bruised and battered. And now she's looking that horse straight in the mouth, not with the worry of herself getting hurt but of wanting to make sure Waverly doesn't, and as they end up on the couch, grasping Waverly’s scarf, Nicole can’t help but pump the brakes, ask, “What happened to friends?”

“I don't wanna be friends,” Waverly breathes, something sparkling in her eye, and Nicole can see, _ knows _ from experience it’s a mixture of surprise and pride and excitement, to have finally said it. And so she lets Waverly be the one to lean down, though Waverly's already _ straddling _her, and Nicole lets Waverly kiss her first, lips soft and warm against her own. 

_ Gift horse_, Nicole thinks. And a gift horse from _ Purgatory_. But Waverly likes her and the giddiness of that knowledge wells up in her like the bubbles of a sip of champagne as Nicole reaches up and the kiss deepens, and she lays a hand on Waverly’s hip, rises up and carefully reverses their positions, guides Waverly and feels Waverly settle gingerly on her back before smiling into the kiss and tugging her even closer, hips canting up to meet her. 

There is something a little different about Wynonna and Deputy Marshall Dolls and Henry and Willa, Nicole has long ago decided, just like there is about Purgatory. Not always bad, but definitely different.

And in the end it doesn’t surprise her that there’s something different about Waverly, too.

-

Waverly looks beautiful in her dress, coming down the stairs like the belle of the ball.

_ Strapless, almost backless dress,_ the relentless police officer part of her ticks off her list, storing the information away for later as Waverly approaches her, saying something about forgetting her accessories. Nicole slips off her bracelet, hold it out for Waverly to take and can’t help but feel some pride at her jewelry on Waverly’s pretty wrist.

It all comes together later, finally, when she’s lying on the ground, the force of Willa’s bullet enough to stun her even though the vest, though thank god she’s not truly hurt. Nicole fakes it well enough though, knows her life depends on it and lies there on the floor until Willa saunters off because she doesn’t want that crazy bitch to actually shoot her where it _ could _do damage.

The Earp sisters flip her over and there’s Waverly, despair in her teary eyes and calling her name, and it hurts her to see it, Wynonna just a step ahead and raging about _ if you’ve been a revenant this whole time_, so Nicole interrupts them both, tugs her shirt down at the collar, popping the buttons opens, and reveals her bullet-proof vest.

“It's kind of standard operating procedure when we got a 404 on our hands,” Nicole explains, sees relief flood over Waverly’s face and something like approval, subtle as it is, come over Wynonna’s.

“Finally picked the smart one,” Wynonna says, relief in her voice, and after she runs out—though not before tossing a coat at them both—Waverly leans down.

There’s the flicker of something from her peripheral, and then a curtain of white feathers around them and for one panicked moment Nicole wonders if the bullet did go through the vest after all or maybe Willa did shoot her in the head as a parting gift, if she’s shot and bleeding out on the cold dirty linoleum floor of the Purgatory police department and her deteriorating body is playing tricks on her. 

But no—Waverly is kissing her again, warm hands on her jaw, light shining through feathers in white rays, soft, and it all makes sense now. 

“My guardian angel,” Nicole says, can’t resist the joke.

“You do a pretty good job of guarding yourself,” Waverly says, and the laugh comes out a half-sob of relief before Waverly wipes her tears away and kisses her again. 

-

Nicole can see the wings now for some reason, plain as day, big and sleek and white and looking softer than new snow. 

“It’s hard enough living in this town as an Earp,” Wynonna had said over their beers one night. “Don’t need big-ass angel wings giving you away as even more of a freak. She hides them—always has. Some sort of glamour or spell of some shit. I don’t know. Ask her, she’s a certified genius.”

They dwarf Waverly, almost, and Nicole doesn’t have to wonder what it must be like to hide something that big, to deny yourself touch so no one finds out, to ask yourself every minute if someone can see the thing that gives you away. She can hide them from view, Waverly had told her, but not from touch. _ The loose shirts, the jacket just over her shoulders, the backless dresses. _

She’s not working a shift today and the Earps don’t keep a strict schedule, and so, back at the homestead, alone for once, Waverly is over her, bare and rocking against her stomach, hands steadying herself against the mattress near her head. A pinion brushes against Nicole’s face as her girlfriend—_her girlfriend!_—moves, Waverly keeping her wings haloed over them both, and Nicole likes it, likes it as much as Waverly’s little moans and breaths as she tugs gently and rhythmically at Waverly’s hips, urging her on.

She’s wet herself—she can feel it with the shift of her hips, but Waverly is close and so Nicole slips her hands from grasping at Waverly’s hips to palming smooth over the small of her back, cradling her, and then up along her spine and a little higher to the back of her ribs, in-and-out trembling under her hands, and she pauses as Waverly’s breaths get shallower, faster, her hips rock faster. 

“Can I?” Nicole asks quietly. Not to touch her wings just to touch them as a curiosity, but to continue to touch _ her Waverly_, every part of her. “You can say no, you know.”

“Yes,” Waverly pants. “Yes, yes, _ yes_.”

And so Nicole runs her hands up and over to where they connect just below Waverly’s shoulder, runs her hands slowly over the feathered humerus and to the little crook there so like the crook of Waverly’s own elbow, holds her close in awe and, _ oh_, Waverly is coming, bowing over her until her head’s tucked just under her chin, shaking and crying out soft, and if she thought Waverly was beautiful before then this beats them all.

-

They step out onto the porch, find Wynonna with her boots up on the railing, drinking and playing with Peacemaker, safety thankfully on.

“Agent Haught To Trot,” Wynonna says, looking up over her shoulder at them with amusement in her voice as she twirls her gun on her index finger smoothly. 

“Wynonna,” Nicole replies with a nod.

“Ready to go shoot some bad guys?”

She knows about it all now—the Earps, Dolls, Doc, Purgatory. She knew there was something missing, something she only had to put her finger on for it all to make sense finally. 

She’s not a gunslinger from the past or a government secret they still don’t know much about, not an Earp heir nor an encyclopedia of obscure knowledge. But she’s a good enough shot and brave enough, has got a gun and her angel by her side.

“Another day, another revenant,” Waverly says cheerfully, arm linked in hers, and with a _ hell fucking yeah _ Wynonna kicks off from the porch, stands and holsters Peacemaker as they all stomp off the porch and into the new deep snow.

Another day, another revenant, and just a regular day in Purgatory.


End file.
